Tag: The Beatles

4,146 words

Dominic Sandbrook
Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to The Beatles
Little, Brown Book Group, 2005

Harold MacMillan was Britain’s Prime Minister (PM) between 1957 and 1963, winning a Conservative Party leadership election after Sir Anthony Eden was forced to resign over the Suez Canal debacle, and thus becoming PM. Despite Britain’s humiliation by President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, this was a time of relative prosperity and stability in Britain. (more…)

3,158 words

During my misspent youth, back when wooly mammoths still walked the Earth, I caught a replay of the Yellow Submarine movie at an indie theatre. It went into production during the Summer of Love, and the film premiered in 1968. One way of regarding the movie is as a framing story to showcase a dozen Beatles songs. (more…)

1,333 words

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Like Neville’s Method, I’ve discussed the cut-up method before, and the reader will perhaps be glad that in this case as well, I won’t be going into great detail about it here.[1] I don’t think there’s any evidence that Bowden used this technique in his writings, and of course his speeches were entirely spontaneous. (more…)

785 words / 2:13:09

Jason Kessler and American Krogan were host Nick Jeelvy‘s guests on the latest broadcast of The Writers’ Bloc, where they had a panel discussion on the Carny Question in Right-wing politics, and it is now available for download and online listening. (more…)

Max Ernst, The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child before Three Witnesses: André Breton, Paul Eluard, and the Painter, 1926

3,285 words

Trans. G. A. Malvicini

One of the most indicative signs of the influence of the regressive processes that we have described in the preceding pages of this book [L’Arco e la Clava] with regard to customs and tastes, is the enjoyment of vulgarity, with its more or less subconscious undercurrent of pleasure taken in degradation and self-contamination. Related to it are the various expressions of a tendency towards deformation and a taste for the ugly and the base. A few observations with regard to this matter will perhaps not be devoid of interest.

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1,593 words

I’m very happy to take WN’s suggestion and add a few words to Mr. Colin Liddell’s excellent article on the Rolling Stones’ classic Their Satanic Majesties Request — which I was glad to see since, for some reason, I seem to have not done Satanic Majesties justice in my own past ruminations, although on reflection, inspired by Mr. Liddell, it seems to have a large enough role.  (more…)

1,908 words

Their Satanic Majesties Request is, to my mind, the most British and therefore the most authentic of all Rolling Stones albums. Their characteristic hard-driving blues is put on the back-burner and suffused through a veil of psychedelia and English whimsy with which the band were seldom associated.

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